A Raw question

[expat]

Does anyone here use RAW format when shooting? And if so for what sort of pictures do you use it.

Matt

[Tom...]

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/raw.htm

I'm sure someone *mic* could explain better than that  ;)

[Mictheslik]

To be honest, I've tried shooting in RAW and it really wasn't for me.....it encourages me to over-edit, and I prefer to set up the camera correctly when I'm taking the picture, rather than changing everything afterwards. They also take up way too much space, and more time needs to be spent opening them all up to check which ones are keepers once you get them on the PC, rather than flicking through them in a standard viewer.

But then again, I know some people swear by RAW....I might give it a try again next time I'm taking relatively few pictures (the loop etc), as the need to spend more time editing is what I dislike about RAW

.mic

[Hagar]

To be honest, I've tried shooting in RAW and it really wasn't for me.....

Likewise although some photographers rave about it. I can only think they enjoy messing around tweaking images. I suppose it all depends on what you want to use them for.

more time needs to be spent opening them all up to check which ones are keepers once you get them on the PC, rather than flicking through them in a standard viewer.

Not sure it's common knowledge that you can use IrfanView to preview RAW images in CR2 format. Saves a lot of time.

[Omag 2.0]

When shooting at airevents or concerts, where I expect lot's of photo's and want as little postprocessing as possible, I always go for jpeg's.

However, when I'm out for some shots, trying to get the best possible result, I switch to raw. It does take some work later on and I'm sure I'm not getting the very bast results in postprocessing at this point, but I start to feel a difference. But raw-files also eat harddisk-space, unfortunatly.

[expat]

When shooting at airevents or concerts, where I expect lot's of photo's and want as little postprocessing as possible, I always go for jpeg's.

However, when I'm out for some shots, trying to get the best possible result, I switch to raw. It does take some work later on and I'm sure I'm not getting the very bast results in postprocessing at this point, but I start to feel a difference. But raw-files also eat harddisk-space, unfortunatly.

That is pretty much what I was thinking about.

[Mictheslik]

Oh, and RAW is very useful for shooting at night.....

It means you can adjust colour etc without so much quality loss in PS

.mic

[pepper_airborne]

I' ve been shooting in RAW most of the times, and find that i usually dont  even use it. When i went to Schiphol i shot them in JPEG, and only felt sorry for a few shots out of 500.

[B747]

Many cameras perform poor post processing- over sharpening, color saturation, contrast, poor conversion to .jpg.  Utilizing RAW can give a much superior image.  For a non-professional or non- serious amateur it's generally more hassle than it's worth, give it a try with your camera to see if you like it.

[mrjake2002]

I use RAW for all of my images... but I'm still getting the hang of post-processing.